Why Freebie Friday instead of Black Friday?

I spent half of Thanksgiving and a good bit of the rest of the week working on improvements in our free demo.

Why? Why would someone do all that work just to give it away?

Erich Longie, our lead cultural consultant, would say it’s because he has had a good influence on me. He was my boss for years, when I was at Spirit Lake Consulting, and he would always tell me when I went to visit another reservation I should bring gifts for the people I was meeting. He said it was a sign of respect and appreciation. They were giving their time to us, which was valuable, and we should give something back.

He also talks a lot about the value of generosity. In Spirit Lake: The Game, Tasina goes out a second time to gather herbs for the whole village. Why? She already brought back herbs for her family and saved them. Because, Erich explains, generosity is a virtue. A good person helps others when he or she can.

That brings us to my Thanksgiving. I’m very thankful to work with so many good people. While we cannot afford to give away the store, we can help schools who cannot afford our games, due to generous people who have sponsored game licenses.

We know that teachers spend a lot of their own money on resources for their classrooms and a lot of their time searching for the right video or activity to get a concept through to a particular child. Not all parents have the disposable income to buy educational games for their home use, nor the time it takes to find just the right video for their child.

Our souped-up free demo for Spirit Lake will be available next week. It’s about 10% better than the one available on our site now, so feel free to download the demo here and come back later and download the new one.